Three months after entry. Juepucha!! I think I am in love.

The other night, my host uncle decided to put me in the hot seat when he asked me what I would say about my host family to another family back in the States (most likely, my own). When he asked me, the entire room—all twelve of my inherited tico relatives—fell silent. Even Jimena, a six-year-old with a stunningly disproportionate amount of energy for how little her body is, dropped her plastic ponies and looked to me for an answer.
What an impossible question.
Not for the fact that I didn’t want to offend my family, but for the fact that I could find no way to describe how I felt about them, let alone articulate my emotions in Spanish. I thought for a moment.
I thought about how in the time that I have been here, I have gotten to know the members of this family better than I know many of my own. I thought about how Sunday nights have become my favorite night of the week, because it means that we get to go donde la abuela (grandma’s house) and spend time together. About how the meaning of spending time there truly means just that—they go with no expectations, no complaints, no partiality or criticisms. They simply go to see other, to waste time together, to play Quien Quiere Ser Millionario or Pictionary and yell over each other and of course, to tease each other, which seems to be a favorite past time. Judy, my tica aunt, never fails to cuss out a Saprissa player in between drilling me about why I won’t tell her about the secret boyfriend she thinks I have stowed away in Jaco, while her husband Freddy sits by and waits patiently to add in his two-sense. Macho my other uncle just makes sure to tell me “pura vida” and to ask if I found some papacitas at the beach. And then there is Wendy, making wisecracks just like her mom, Tony and Danny usually the brunt of her jokes.
I thought about everything that this family has gone through. Jimena and her parents, Manuel and Hazel, had recently just lost a son to cancer. Isaac had not completed his fifth birthday before he was lost to leukemia, but not before visiting the Saprissa stadium to see his favorite futbol players and of course, (his favorite part according to mom and dad), the dancers. To listen to his family talk about him is to raise your eyebrows in disbelief as they look back on all of their crazy Sunday nights, Isaac often the center of energy and the delight of the entire family. I thought about the look that Hazel gets on her face when she listens to Judy recount a story about Isaac—as if she is holding his picture in her hands instead of a crumpled-up napkin, and the furrowed brow of distaste as she talks about the amount of time they spent in the Children’s Hospital near the end. I thought of Manuel, an anchor for his grieving wife and daughter, forever interested in everything that they each have to say, always the joker but with the same bitter furrow for Isaac. And Jimena, who wet her pants when she found out Isaac was no longer living, repeating kindergarten because she missed so much school to be with him in the hospital.
I thought of my brothers and my parents, who never tire of listening to my stories about small triumphs in class—the first time I spoke up in geography class, my first presentation, and my complaints after having failed—literally, failed—my first exam. I thought of Enrique with his arm forever around Janette’s shoulders, forever the gentleman, looking out for rampant cars and holding an umbrella over both of their heads. I thought of Janette, forever the mother, and more concerned that I get enough to eat at every meal than even I am.
I thought of how this family has no reason to be so welcoming, to quiz me about my weekend trip to the playa, to include me in their private jokes and tell me about their sorrows—they know that I will be gone in six months, anyway. But they truly care. And I truly feel like one of them.
I thought of this, and I realized, I was expecting a lot of things from an experience abroad, but finding another family was not one of them.
I nearly cried.

Two months after entry. I know a lot has happened, but it is hard to recall learning experiences on command

OK honestly, I apologize profusely for not having blogged sooner. At this point, I really don’t even feel like an official blogger anymore. I feel more like a half-baked writer with no excuse for not having written for so long.

I mean, I do kindof have an excuse, because my last computer did crash. . . And we really didn’t have functioning internet until a few weeks ago. So I do deserve a little bit of slack, though I admit it is unacceptable to be experiencing the kinds things that I am without documenting them. Despite wanting to be a journalist in my next stage of life, I have found that I oddly don’t enjoy journaling that frequently. How peculiar of me, but that is that.

In Panama City, while Mary (my travel buddy--reinas de Panama!) and I suffocated in our non-air conditioned hostel in 36 degree weather (yes, I am using Celsius now, and you should too. Really, it is little things like not knowing how hot it will be in San Jose the coming week because the newscast did not translate into Fahrenheit that makes me ashamed to be an American) and waited until ten to go out and be like the other crazy latinos, I was lying on my bed and thinking that I actually was looking forward to the 16 hour bus ride home. I told this to Mary, and she looked at me like either the heat or the cockroach we had recently massacred had affected me too much. But the sad part is, it was true--I was literally, in that moment--and not just because I could have filled an aquarium with the amount of sweat I produced--anticipating the moment when I could sit on the air-conditioned bus and just, do nothing.

Or rather, reflect while doing nothing productive. This was something I learned about myself that I did not realize until spending a total of 38 hours on a bus: that I like to reflect. I like to look out of windows at rolling tropical countryside and think about everything that happened to me in the last few days and analyze how it affected me, what my strengths and weaknesses were in traveling, what I look forward to upon returning home and what I am going to miss from our stay. I reflect on the people we met, why they act the way they do and why things are the way they are, why Panama is so Americanized and why it had to be the United States (of course) to instigate the Canal, how people react to it and what I would think in their place. I love to think about all of this and more. (Remember, though--the keyword here is think. Writing about the experience is a whole different animal, so I have to be in the right mood to type it all out. Hence, a lack of blog posts for a while).

Alright, I know this is a short one and I really owe a bit more to the good name of costaricanchowder.blogspot.com, but I need to go to bed. Sick for the fourth time in two months--apparently, my immune system really hates Central American air. But have faith, I’ll prove to my withering body yet that being exposed to tropical bacteria is healthy in the long run.

Hasta entonces, pura vida!

Almost four weeks after arrival. This post I shall call: I am sorry for not keeping up. I have been busy learning a foreign language and eating gallo

To start off: I absolutely can not believe that it is March. Time flies when you are living and breathing a different language. Some things about it though, I can not say I expected.

Being surrounded by Spanish (and no, before anyone asks, I am nowhere near fluent yet. At this point, I think I will be happy if I can make it through a conversation with my tico brother without having to ask him to repeat something less than seven times), I have noticed a few funny things about living and functioning in the presence of two languages.

One is when phrases in Spanish are directly translated from English, as in, the English language has such a huge impact on all other cultures via movies and music and other mass media that the exact same words are used to explain the same thing. For example: rat tail in Spanish is cola de rata—a direct translation. Call me crazy, but I get a big kick out of this. Something closely related is when they don’t even bother to translate an English phrase. For example, jeans are jeans in Spanish, and I read an article the other day in La Nacion talking about IPhone “apps.” I don’t know whether I should be afraid that Mac will eventually take over the entire world, or proud that a business from my home country is being discussed in my Central American home. Regardless, it is pretty entertaining to listen to a native Spanish speaker talking about “apps” with an accent.

I have also found it really interesting that there are so few words for some things in Spanish. Or to put it more accurately, that only a few words are actually used as common phrases. Just about anything here can appropriately be called “bonito,” which in a Spanish-English dictionary means “beautiful,” but which is actually used in lieu of other words to describe things that are cool, romantic, neat, nice, great, awesome, wonderful and sweet. For example, a tica student helper on our tour of campus pointed out some bars to us that were bonito, my prima tica asked me if the last movie I saw was bonito, and my papa tico’s reaction when I told him the story of how my parents had met was “Ay, que bonito” (That is the other thing about the word “bonito”—both men and women use it an equal amount, which is always a little funny for me to hear given the fact that I always directly translate it in my head as “beautiful” Few American men use this word unless they have a feminine objective in mind). At first, this excessive use of “bonito” got on my nerves. Being a journalism major, I wanted to tell some of these ticos to go look in a thesaurus. But then I realized, maybe these people call things beautiful so often because that is what they are. How simple and how--well, beautiful--to have found one word that can portray exactly what you think of it.

On the flip side, there are other Spanish words that exist in abundance to describe what we only have one word for in English. The most obvious and most poignant example is the English word for love. Spanish speakers have at least four different words for love, each one to describe a more specific type. There is the love of things and activities (encantarse), the love between friends and sometimes family and sometimes a food or activity that you are especially fond of (amar), the love between family and spouses (querer) and of course, a more sexual love between partners (desear). How poetic to distinguish the many facets of love.

I think I might love Spanish.

Two weeks after arrival. (I realize this post is late, but internet is a privilige in CR, not a right. And, I really did write this two weeks ago).

Some things I have learned/noticed thus far:

1) Costa Ricans (and I am going to take a gander here and say Latin Americans in general, and probably most other countries besides the U.S.) save everything. And I mean, everything. My host mom has plastic bags in the cupboard that are at least a year old. My family (of four people not counting myself) shares one towel, and that towel gets changed out once a week. Most of them are threadbare and a frankly, a little gross-looking by now, but that really doesn’t stop my mama tica from using them. In her eyes, a towel that still soaks up a little wet is still a towel, and it gets the job done. This is a way of thinking that I have yet to completely absorb, though once I do (and I really hope that I can) I think a few aspects of my life back in the states will probably have changed forever.
2) Costa Ricans love their families. Every day when my host brother comes home from work, the first thing he does is grasp his fathers hand and hug his mom. Ever day. My host brother is thirty years old. I have another brother that is thirty five; neither are married, so instead they live with their parents and work while the parents are retired. Everything they work for goes to benefit the whole of the family. No matter how much you try to justify it, things just aren’t quite like that at home.
3) Mangoes. . . are my new favorite fruit. I eat one every day at breakfast, and have yet to tire of the amazing ripe-ness that they can achieve sitting out in the ferias of Curridabat.
4) I could actually probably do a whole separate blog on all of the different foods I eat, but I feel like that might get boring. Basically, I have tried a million tasty things that are usually in the category of fried, rice, beans, eggs, and delicious. I think that about sums it up.
5) Time is completely warped here. This could have something to do with the fact that I am simply accustomed to a very different schedule, but for some reason, I wake up at the crack of dawn every morning, and end up going to bed at ten. I feel like my parents, but honestly it is just so hard to stay asleep in the mornings here—by eight in the morning, it feels like the middle of the day, both in terms of the heat and the number of people running along the streets. Hence, I wake up by seven and am mentally exhausted by about four. In these terms, ten is actually impressively late.

One week in: Where to begin?

Nothing is ever what you expect it to be.

Every morning, I still have problems comprehending that I am waking up in a completely different country. People have been telling me for a while now that I will miss things that I didn’t expect to miss, that I will be most surprised by things that aren’t even really that exciting—but I have to say, I really didn’t believe them until now.

For example: I never imagined myself brushing my teeth in my host parents’ bathroom. For that matter, I never imagined anything having to do with a bathroom in Costa Rica; in my pre-departure imagination, I assumed that I would be too busy learning to surf to care about the upkeep of a fresh and minty mouth. But the fact of the matter is, I am not just vacationing here. I am living here, breathing in the polluted air of San Pedro on the bus every day to school and bringing the lunch my mama tica kindly prepares for me and, in general, getting used to the idea that this is my home for the next six months.

Aside from the few times that my tico brother has had to repeat his sentence upwards of five times while I stare at him like I don’t know any Spanish, I feel that I have been progressing well with fitting in to my host family. Surprisingly, I seem to get along the best with my papa tico, who I think gets a bit of a kick out of my stumbling over verb conjugations and is the most likely to ask me a question without giving up before hearing the answer. He is also one of the easiest for me to understand, because he has a habit of half-yelling most of his sentences (this habit I very much appreciate).

I have also heard that the one week mark is the first learning curve for a foreign language; the second comes after two weeks, and then improvement becomes a little more sparse. As for personal experience: I can’t say that my Spanish has gotten any worse, but honestly, I don’t think I have much to compare it with. Back in the states, I hardly ever actually practiced my Spanish with another living person (which in retrospect, might have been a good idea), so all I can really say that spitting out a five word sentence is better than the nodding and smiling that I was previously used to.

I suppose just the fact that I am now willing to stop and chat a little with the neighbor down the street is more than I ever could have expected from myself at home, so we’ll go ahead and say that the trip so far is looking up.

Two days until departure. Actually, just over 24 hours—but until it is actually February 2, I am going to lie to myself and say that I have two days.

I am going to poop my pants. Mom, get the Imodium out of my bag—forget avoiding fruits that aren’t peeled, ‘cause I need it now.

It is safe to say that anxiety may have finally caught up with my brimming enthusiasm for traveling to this lovely country. Although, aside from being nervous about speaking in Spanish with my host family (who, by the way, I will know nothing about until I actually get to meet them in person), I am anxious about things that I never knew a sensible human could be anxious about.

For example: I am most worried about injuring myself before I leave for Costa Rica. Not so much while I am there, but before I even leave the United States. The other day, I cut my finger on a bottle; the cut has still not healed, and looks like it even might be getting deeper. I can’t help but wonder, what happens if it’s infected? If my finger is infected now, just think of the things that it could contract while in a country whose health care system is still not considered adequate by the U.S. Pus could soon be oozing out of this cut. It is so sore already—what if it gets worse, and I can’t even email my friends back home? The funny part about all of this is that if I try to imagine getting the same kind of cut while there, then the same consequences somehow don’t apply. My finger cut can only be fatal if obtained here. My diagnosis for this mental derangement is that I am most fearing the unexpected; the fact that when I am in Costa Rica, I will already know what to do with a cut finger is more comforting to me than the fact that at this moment, I have no real health coverage and no idea how to take care of myself upon arriving in a foreign country with a fingertip secreting infectious liquid.

I have also found, as likely many past participants of study abroad have, that the last few weeks before leaving are an emotional roller coaster. Before dismissing this as PMS, believe me when I say that more things have happened to me and that I have done more things than I feel like I typically accomplish in a five-month span when not planning to flee the country. I’m not sure if it’s the mentality that I will be gone anyway, so who cares what I say or do, if it’s the fact that I have now convinced myself that I am dieing (see past blog), or that the prospect of leaving simply inspires me to do things I normally would not. Whichever it is, there’s no denying that it has been quite the ride. Side effects which include laughing like a maniac at different intervals in the day, shaky hands when trying to eat fried chicken, and heavy drinking.

Over Christmas, one of my friend’s parents gave me a book called, When God Winks. It’s supposed to be about how everything works out for a reason, and how if we all take a moment and look, we can see God or Fate or whatever you want to call it giving us a nod to go ahead in the right direction. Well. Before reading this book, I was already convinced that I had received several signs that I was meant to go to Costa Rica; I must now look like a fate fanatic.

There was the movie, Yes Man, which I recommend to everyone who has not seen it, and sends the valuable message of saying yes to all chances in life, especially the ones that sound awkward and uncomfortable, because those are the most rewarding. Clearly meant for me. And there was the Costa Rican guidebook written in Spanish—the only book on Costa Rica or in Spanish in the entire bookstore where I worked (every day I went to work, I told myself I was meant to go if the book was still there. It was clearly fate, because travel books on Costa Rica and written in a foreign language and hidden in the corner of an unorganized store are very much a commodity these days). And let’s not forget my dream. I had a dream about running along the beach of Costa Rica during a stunning sunrise, glancing at houses next to each other that proudly displayed Coloradan and Costa Rican flags next to each other (never mind that I don’t know what the Costa Rican flag looks like). At the end of the dream, I reached the top of a very large and green hill, huffing and puffing, and I saw the most amazing view . . . and I had the most poignant moment in a dream I have ever had. It was a mix of accomplishment, independence, serenity and adrenaline, which had a very intoxicating and exhilarating effect.

Actually, that dream I really am holding on to like no other. I have never been one for interpreting dreams, but if that one means that I am going to experience something similar, I am not so opposed.

January 19, 2010: Two weeks until departure. This first entry I will call: Last minute lunch.

Going abroad, I have decided, is a lot like getting ready to die.

This thought may or may not have been my main motivation for starting a blog; the thought that I would be “dead” in a few weeks without leaving some king of eulogy was apparently too much to bear. So, I sat down this afternoon with every intention of describing my anticipation of leaving this country to live in Costa Rica for a little over five months, and found that instead, I really just felt like I was dieing.

And this is why: every time I talk to an old friend and discuss my up-and-coming adventures, the conversation usually follows along the path of, “Oh, I am going to miss you so much,” and inevitably ends in, “Well, I have to see you before you go.”

So the majority of my days are taken up with hurried friend-dates, cramming in those last few conversations about boys and school and my living situation abroad and about 20 or so “be careful’s” and “what-will-I-do-without-you’s” before I commence to fall off the face of the earth. I have hugged at least five people whose last names I don’t even know. And every time I leave somewhere for the last time, whether it be from work or my final Zumba class, the well-wishers always have this look on their face that is somewhere between a furrowed brow of concern and teary-eyed nostalgia.

In no way am I saying that I do not want to see these people, or even that I resent them for acting like I am never coming home. Really, I should be blaming our culture. We are all so afraid of change that my leaving is somehow causing this ripple effect on everyone else’s life. In reality, we all know that a few weeks after I leave, the world will turn as it always has, that at least one student will fall asleep in Philosophy of Politics with Dr. Ramos, that frat boys will continue to drink, and that my mom will continue her morning ritual of comics and crossword puzzles.

Despite all of the melodrama, I do have to admit that it is nice knowing I will be missed. I would like to take all of these displays of affection over lunches and movies to mean that if I really were to die, a substantial number of people would show up at my funeral. So, if for some reason I should get into a freak accident while zip-lining over the rainforest (yes, I plan on doing that, mom), I can at least take comfort in the fact that I hugged and said I would miss everyone in my life whom I really do plan on missing, whether it be from Central America or from Heaven.

Morbid, I know, but an undeniable piece of mind that I plan on taking with me on the plane.










**A note on the title of this blog:

When I was about 12 and planning my future as a great novelist, I decided that I would conclude my literary career with an autobiography. I struggled for a while about what to call it, until one day, it simply came to me. The best way to sum up a life such as mine—one that is composed mostly of fragmented reflections and silly stories—is to call it a chowder. A Chowder of My Life. In honor of my 6th grade stroke of genius, I thought it would be equally appropriate to call my experience abroad, A Costa Rican Chowder. I actually don’t even know if they make chowder in Costa Rica, but this small fact makes my title no less relevant. My experiences there, I am sure, will be just as poignant as the many moments of love and sadness and laughter that I have experienced thus far in the United States. It will, I am also sure, have a very different taste; perhaps the moments I experience there won’t even really resemble chowder. I have faith, though, that when this Costa Rican Chowder is mixed with the one that I started cooking up 21 years ago, the end result will be delicious.